“Instead of responding directly to the Virginia field where House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and several others were shot,” bloomberg.com reports, “members of the Capitol Police Containment and Emergency Response Team were signaled instead to go to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s house in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, several miles away.” Oops!

Fortunately . . .

The tactical squad did make it to the Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia, where the shooting took place and it’s unclear how much time the unit lost because of the mix-up. It also wasn’t clear whether the squad arrived at Pelosi’s house or was redirected en route.

One of the people familiar with the incident said police are saying the unit’s delayed reaction had no operational impact. Local Alexandria police officers responded quickly to the shooting site.

Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? But not without reason . . .

Police have said two Capitol Police officers were already at the field because they were assigned to Scalise’s security detail. They were the first to return fire at the gunman. Quick-arriving Alexandria police officers also took fire from the gunman. Authorities haven’t said which officers fired the fatal shots.

Of course, if there had been a coordinated terrorist attack by multiple bad guys, or if the Capitol Police Officers had been taken out during the initial attack, the Keystone CERT Cops deployment would have been an epic fustercluck.

The fact remains, whether you’re a politician or a member of the proletariat, you are your own first responder.

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67 COMMENTS

    • And if those roads happen to be between Georgetown and Alexandria… well, having driven there, I wouldn’t put much hope in a timely response.

    • Wow, and to think that I assumed wrong address errors were only on serving warrants. The more you know.

  2. I wonder if she called them and said the shooting was at her house.
    She seems scumbag enough to worry about herself in no danger over people who are in danger.

  3. Yeah I mean why have a emergency response team that has level 3 plus body armor with plate armor and rifles why use them to defend people who are unarmed in a violent struggle for their lives. Better off to save old Nancy and to hell with the Republicans on the field. In my experience with law enforcement you deal with the threat that is at hand which would have been the gunman in the stadium and you send regular Patrol units to secure other known possible targets. They did this ass backwards. Someone should have to answer for that kind of a BS decision. You send the special weapons and Tactical Unit or your emergency response team that has the fire power tactics and body armor to the most violent threat which was in the stadium not at Old Nancy’s house. That’s for regular Patrol units to go to those houses and make sure those people are secure not to send a SWAT team there to make sure that she’s okay that’s ridiculous use the SWAT team for what the SWAT team was designed for engaging targets that are heavily armed and taking lives at the present time. Not to send them on a babysitting tour to someone’s house that absolutely no report of a threat was made. I have a big BS on this one.

    • That brings up an interesting question: did someone mistakenly direct the CERT team to Pelosi’s home? Or did someone direct the CERT team to Pelosi’s home as a proactive measure to secure her?

      As far as I can tell from the article, it sounds like someone mistakenly directed the CERT team to Pelosi’s home. Does anyone have anything more compelling or authoritative?

      • ” Does anyone have anything more compelling or authoritative?”

        Besides bitter disappointment none of them got a clean shot of her? 🙂

        (Without make-up, Pelosi kinda resembles Helen Thomas, that middle-eastern woman…)

  4. Even when your local police have the most noble intentions, sometimes they cannot reach you in a timely manner. Thus the saying, “When seconds count, the police are just minutes away!” (And the Pulse nightclub attack tells us that police might actually be hours away.)

    What could hinder police response time?
    — Caller provides wrong address.
    — Dispatchers mistakenly provide wrong address.
    — Responding officers cannot find address.
    — Primary route to your home is obstructed.
    — Bad weather creates abysmal road conditions.
    — All available units are already responding to priority calls.
    — Police station is 20+ miles away.

    • I responded to an active shooter several years ago. I was less than a mile away when the call came out, but thanks to the inherent delay with dispatch, we got there three minutes after the first 911 call. Probably less than a minute after it came out on the air. We didn’t wait before going in, either, but that was still enough time for him to kill four people.

      There’s pretty much no way we could have gotten there faster than we did. And that doesn’t make one bit of difference to the people we couldn’t save.

      Edit- not complaining about dispatch, they did everything right on this one.

      • Hasdrubal,

        There you go: even when everyone does everything right and there are no hiccups, it still takes police most likely at least 4 minutes to arrive on scene after an attacker starts their attack. If the attacker does nothing more than deliver a mortal wound to one person every 30 seconds, there will be 8 dead (or dying) bodies on scene by the time police arrive.

        As you stated, that was the best possible response time and it required that EVERYONE hit a proverbial “home run”. Now imagine response time when there is even a minor hiccup of some sort.

        Please note that I am not “cop bashing”. I am simply stating reality. (Hence my first comment used the word “noble”.)

        • Ya, Hasdrubal, in the situation you recited WERE YOU MISDIRECTED? DID YOU GET CALLED OUT TO A DIFFERENT SITE TO DELAY YOUR RESPONSE TIME TO THE ACTUAL EMERGENCY? DID SOMEONE SWAT THE SWAT TEAM TO PEOLOSI’S HOUSE TO BUY THEMSELVES or the shooter (cough* c o n s p i r a c y) TIME TO DO SOME KILLING?

          HAVE ANY ONE OF YOU BEEN TO OKLAHOMA? I live in a relatively urban area, but you could be waiting an hour + for a 911 AMBULANCE call, just for the distances. My neighbor’s wife committed suicide and it took the sheriff 1 hour and 40 minutes to get there and his backup took another hour and we had to guide him on-target by phone to radio patched in comms.

        • I don’t want to get into a conspiracy theory thing here. Uncommon_sense was listing reasons why police can be delayed, and I was trying to back that up with the simple fact that even when everything goes right, it can still be too slow by far for the people at the scene. Didn’t look like cop bashing at all, by the way.

          If information later emerges that someone intentionally misdirected the CERT response, I will gladly read it, but as someone who has worked for the federal government (Army) and local government (police), I can tell you incompetence and bureaucracy explains nearly every failure without needing sinister motives.

        • “incompetence and bureaucracy explains nearly every failure without needing sinister motives”

          Sad, but true.

        • Not to belabor the point, but 1st on the scene is 2ND RESPONDER. The victim’s response might be a blank stare and drooling, or bleeding-out, but that’s still a response.

    • Believe the officers on the screen had radios. That “should have” eliminated a Good Samaritan’s imprecise directions.

  5. Well sure but it was Virginia. The congress critters certainly could have been armed. Any material difference? I’m doubting that…oh and shite happens.

    • “The congress critters certainly could have been armed.”

      Yeah, if there was a place to check their weapons (out, once the left D.C., and in, before they went back to work). I know Senators from my state are frugal enough to live out of their offices. But they should pay to check weapons for their security?

      THE EVIL POS (D) WANTED EVERY (R) THERE KILLED BUT THEY COULDN’T MUSTER IT.

      THE MAIN TARGET FOR THE EVIL POS (D) WAS SIDELINED NOT OUT. AND YOU KNOW HE WAS THE MAIN TARGET OF THE EVIL POS (D) BECAUSE IT WAS BUSINESS AS USUAL WHILE HE CONVALESCED, BUT THE SENATE SHAT ITSELF WAITING FOR “CALL ME (D)BRAIN” MCCAIN WHILE HE WAS DOWN FOR 2.5 DAYS WITH HIS BRAIN DAMAGE.

  6. It seems like the ‘Containment and Emergency Response Team’ might be tasked with making sure that a terrorist threat does not spread beyond it’s initial target.

    No one knew at first whether that attack was limited or there would be coordinated assaults on Government leaders.

    Sending the team to the House Minority Leader seems like common sense to me.

    • Really? Someone made that decision, someone made that call. Why then not send team to (republican) Speaker of the House, or (republican) House Majority Leader, or (republican) Senate Majority leader…? You get my drift….

      • Ya, even if all the (R) were known to be at the ball field; send ALL your resources to Peleolosi’s?

    • If someone was trying to take out people in line for the Presidency, I can see sending them to the location of the House Majority leader.

      As far as the succession is concerned, the House Minority leader is irrelevant. Pelosi does not merit any special protection until her party is a majority in the House.

      Sounds like the Capitol Police failed to update procedures, for several years running.

      • Based on a lifetime of experience with beurocracy, I’d say you nailed it rosignol. The prepared plan hadn’t been updated since the election, and SS covers PoTUS and VPoTUS, so sending the capital police CERT team to protect what had been the Speaker of the House actually makes sense. Still a serious cluster for who ever was supposed to update the plan, but it makes sense none the less.

  7. I dunno. Surrounding Pelosi’s house to ensure nobody comes out sounds pretty reasonable to me. Maybe the CERT just got their priorities straight?

  8. You can’t make this stuff up. This happened for a reason. The LEO boys are simply trying to divert attention and get everyone to move along to the next shiny object.

    Drain the Swamp.

  9. Diverted on purpose? Can’t have mass casualties if first responders get there too quick, and the evil (D) could only muster one crazy asshole out of the myriad assholes they are comprised of, and of the likely multiple shooter team they tried to put together.

    • Yeah, makes total sense except that this isn’t bizarro world and there were armed responders literally right at the scene. Which means it makes no sense whatsoever.

      • What makes no sense? That 5 people (reported) called 911 and remained on line with dispatch during the shooting, so they dispatch the CERT team to where there’s peace/quiet/ and safety? Sounds like it could have at least been a purposeful misdirection by a bad actor. Is it a stretch to say that the bad actor was an evil (D)?

        Does this hit too close to home for you?

        If you live in a blue state, you MAY be part of the problem. If you are a liberal, progressive, communist, globalist, evil POS (D) or rino, THE PROBLEM IS PART OF YOU, YOU ARE A SCOURGE, AND YOUR MOTHER OWES US AN ABORTION.

      • The armed responders were Scalise’s security team. He had received threats after Obama attempted to link him to the evil (D) KKK. That fact was specifically cited by the shooter in the shooter’s assbook posts.

        You tell me that, out of all the bank robberies that have happened in America, none have been preceded by an anonymous 911 call to some other part of the city? Yeah, totally delusional hunh?

        Here’s what will tell you (what will point out what really happened). What is the criteria needed to launch the CERT team, and what were their orders? Where did the orders come from? Who is in their active chain of command?

  11. The comment that Pelosi might have called them reminds me Field Marshall Model’s reaction to the air drop on Arnhem. “What could be important in Arnhem? ME! I’m in Arnhem!”

  12. Pelosi… Scalise… all these Italian names sound just the same.
    Disclaimer (before some SJW starts accusing me of being anti-Italian): I’m Italian myself, born and raised, now a happy citizen of the USofA.

  13. “the Keystone CERT Cops”….so it’s their fault someone dispatched them to the wrong address? Watch yourself, your anti-LEO is showing.

        • Ok, incompetent or dupes, at the end of the day, we’re paying the bill, we get to discern what we’re getting for our $$$. Which one of those terms best supplants the word “effective” in this scenario?

  14. “Investigators are still reviewing how and why the initial misdirection occurred. One possibility being reviewed is a transponder mix-up, or a transponder code being used for the wrong congressional leader, said the people familiar with the events.” From Bloomberg

      • Sounds like you’re making excuses for them.

        F al the evil (D). Conservatives are still blamed for every other shooting out there, including what’s going on in Mexico, when in fact we all know the theater shooter was evil (D), Sandy Hook shooter and mom and family were (D), Gabby Giffords shooter was evil (D). Fast and Furious was evil (D) on purpose, etc,. etc., etc., there’s not enough time or room to complete the list, if you need more examples you need to choke yourself. We all know who the POS are and they are (D). They are a permanently broken scourge. Their mothers each owe us an abortion.

  15. Perhaps this will help move National Reciprocity since it helps remind the Congressmen and Senators that they are their own first responders.

  16. I don’t see the problem here. In the event that the Republican House leaders were killed, the Police Containment and Emergency Response Team has strict orders to shoot Nancy Pelosi.

  17. Mr. Robert Farago is obviously anti-cop. I come here to read the “Truth” about guns, but instead I find articles on the Truth about law enforcement (according to Farago). I read his biography (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/about/), and I didn’t see ANYTHING mentioning Law Enforcement or military experience. What I read is something about another media type who thinks he knows more than he actually does. So you target shoot on the weekends, and you read books and watch instructional videos on the theory of self defense, and I guess that makes you an expert. I have close to 20 combined years of on the job experience handling firearms: Marine Corps (Infantry), private (armed) security, and Fed. L.E. Members of the Military and Law Enforcement are just human, prone to the same weaknesses that everyone else is (fear, anxiety, confusion, etc). Mistakes are made. But I’ll be damned if engaging a charging dog and a gun peaking around the corner of a door is one of them (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/07/robert-farago/mississippi-cops-kill-man-serving-arrest-warrant-wrong-house/), or driving to the wrong address because dispatch sent you to the wrong place. You keep using words like “keystone cops” and “killer cops” to spread your hate. But Ive got words for you: pencil pushing desk jockey, know it all hack, Sunday morning quarterback, wannabe who’s was too cowardly to actually use those so-called gun skills in a career to help people. Instead you sit back and judge those who do, scrutinizing their every move. Well, take this rag and shove it. I’ll get my gun articles somewhere else.

    • You are actually anti-Mr.Farago. He is not anti-cop, but anti-bad cop. You’d know this had you actually read the articles — which you very clearly haven’t so don’t even bother arguing that — before jumping to demonstrably asinine and unsupportable conclusions based exclusively on your personal feelings. His personal accolades and experience, as well as yours, are irrelevant and inapplicable so long as you continue willfully failing to actually refute any arguments he makes. And no, no you haven’t so you might as well not even go there, either. The only one spreading hate around here is you, and that’s all there is to it. I’ve got some words for you: small-minded, defensive, snowflake, projectionist hack who’s literally too stupid to set emotion aside and use reason. All of us, including you, have every right and reason to scrutinize every move of our public servants — THAT’S how a Republic is supposed to work and THAT is how a government and its functionaries are held to account. That you clearly don’t know this rightly makes me question all of your claims of alleged service, public and private. So, no, you can take your incoherent and meaningless rant and shove it. You got the real truth about guns here (or nearasdamnit), and whether you like to think so or not is irrelevant and inconsequential, it’s just that you don’t like reading it. Tough shit. Go some place else, then, if you want your ego stroked. This site doesn’t need nor want you, and good riddance to you.

    • I don’t read a lot of anti-cop here. The main complaint (as titled above) is that the CERT team rushed to where they were sent, and it’s at least worth the moderate percentage of posts here [53 as of the time of this writing] to voice and examine some cynicism as to why it was at Pelosi’s residence. If a bad-actor wanted to prevent or slow down the response to the shooting of the (R) team at the ball field, that bad-actor could do no better (in the time frame) than to divert the CERT team to someplace else. I ALSO WANNA KNOW IF PELOSI CALLED FOR THE CERT TEAM.

      But wanh, whiney cop, no donut. I think I share a common opinion that all cops are great until they start to think that they equal >1 human being, or if they believe themselves to be a more noble creature than the people that they SERVE in their jurisdiction. If you believe you = >1 than you = 0.

      If you = 1 citizen, then I’d take a bullet for you to ensure that you got home to your family and continue to protect mine.

  18. Good cops in a corrupted system fail. Good information in a misaligned system doesn’ t matter. Good people served by a broken system are ill-served.

    It’s the difference between a fault and a failure. (What do they teach in the schools these days?)

    Fortunately, as citizens of a republic, it’s our prerogative to manage the systems we use to govern and protect ourselves. We can fix bad dispatch systems (including people corrupted or not up to the job in dispatch roles.) We can look at the cost of “no knock” raids and change the policy — accept the cost of fewer photo ops for the suits, in return for more citizens and cops coming home alive. (The calculus of no-knock raids, or warrant service seems skewed.)

    If there were calls and a dispatch, there are records. These systems are electronic. They produce records simply by doing things. If there’s a bad actor, we can find them. If there’s a system problem we can localize it. If the records disappear, well, that’s prosecutable, and of our administrative functionaries to investigate and prosecute, they can be thrown out too.

    I am happy to have bile for any miscreant we find. So far we have found one, unequivocal, whack-job miscreant in this issue. Plus several people who behaved heroically in an instant, when it mattered. Plus, what looks like a screw-up, that happened somewhere.

  19. Nancy Pelosi must surely get a lot more death threats than Scalise. “Well, they didn’t say exactly who was shot, but we figured…”

    The one (and only) aspect of this weird tale that could have justification is the notion that the most senior member of the House (and I believe it is her, like it or not) needed to be immediately made aware of exactly who among her colleagues had been felled as part of the continuation procedures. But that would obviously be contingent on *first* reaching the ballfield & notifying the other potential successors. That early on, dispatchers could have easily assumed that most of the Republican leadership were already killed, at which point –disturbingly– I believe it would fall to Nancy to preside over at least the immediate aftermath (which would mean it is existentially important she is accounted for & secured as soon as possible, lest the attack unfolding nearby come after her next). If dispatchers or responders confused this critical duty with the actual physical response, I can see how a crew who thought they were going to the incident location ended up at the likely present location of a leadership figure nearby.

    Still no excuse for not having a proper armed response available at the scene to start with; that was a shamefully soft & important target they left exposed, especially considering all the security theater hell they put the rest of us plebes through, using all our hard earned money. Had the shooter not been (guessing here) such a slovenly drunk, and/or used an SKS with decent sights, we could very well have been witness to a Black Swan event to rival the Reichstag fire, bringing with it God only knows what horrible consequences by the scared, panicked animals in Congress. Our federal government likely could have looked very, very different today, but for that shooter’s incompetence, all because of the negligence of our representatives who should know better, how much they are hated by crazed liberals.

    • Again, 5 people (reported) (and not including Scalise’s security team, who we’d assume were communicating with someone higher) were on the phone with VA police during the entire shooting.

      Did whoever dispatched the CERT team to Paleolosi’s house just assume that everyone was already dead at the ball field (gunman succeeded but didn’t need interdicting from further mischief)? Or that the situation at the ball filed was under control and in-hand? IN WHICH CASE, WHY DEPLOY THE CERT TEAM?

    • Barnbwt, Pelosi was the house MINORITY leader at the time of the shooting and as such not in line if succession for anything at all. There is no administrative reason for sending protection to her as a result of this event.

  20. I still think the whole thing stinks. They were going to vote on the bill with the suppressor de-regulation that morning.

  21. Government employees should not have tax payer provided security details. A fear of the citizens is a good thing in a government employee’s mind.

  22. I don’t know about you guys, but I always plan a diversion so all the cops go to the ballfield
    Then I launch my real attack across town
    It is irritating that the police would not all blindly go rushing to my diversion

  23. the whole department is full of Demoncrat supporters, so of course they are going to protect their own first! or like the twin cities full of Jihadists who shoot un armed women but can’t seem to find the bad guys

  24. This bothers me:
    “police are saying the unit’s delayed reaction had no operational impact. Local Alexandria police officers responded quickly to the shooting site.”

    So the threat was over, the Capital police did their duty and the Alexandria police responded quickly. Is CERT needed at all?

    • Good question Icabod. The short answer is that they MAY have been desperately needed at the ball field where the actual shooting was taking place, while they were assuredly NOT needed at Pelosi’s house.

      That is, had the attack at the ball field gone differently, the misdirection of CERT could have resulted in more casualties.

      As it worked out, the question is academic, but to not probe how such a serious mistake was made would be remiss.

  25. Does anyone believe “official statements” in this day and age. Its been 100 years since WW 1 ended and there are those who still believe what the media says and worse, what the government says. The programming is working.

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